“O God, what have any of us done to deserve such hatred?” Feli exclaimed.
“Hatred is soon over. It is love which does the damage in this world,” Concha replied. “Yet what sort of a life would we have without it? Come! I have told them I shall be in the President’s office. Come, Feli! Don’t stand there thinking!”
The portraits on the paneled walls looked down on them with exaggerated masculinity, some ready to seize command and get a statue in the Alameda, others prepared to surrender with such artificial dignity that they would get the statue just the same. That, too, was the mood of the defenders in the city. The Presidenta was a woman and had no existence. When the police and the Ministry of the Interior and the lieutenant colonel commanding the Presidential Guard remembered to call her, they gave comfort — very shortly. She had to cross-question them with the forcefulness of a fishwife before she could get a picture that was anywhere near the truth.
Hour after hour the impression of chaos increased until the reports became more frequent. Too frequent now. They were coming to Concha for advice. They were clinging to anyone who would take responsibility. But it wasn’t command they wanted. They were using her as a mother, whose sharp or soothing words would justify more bloodshed.
And all this, she thought ironically, for Gregorio, whom she was popularly supposed to beat! A comic postcard of her dubious domination. If she had any such magnificence at all, it was that of some tough old maid using all her efficiency to see that her pet dog took first prize at every show. She should have had a husband like Miro — Miro, the only Vidalista of any dynamic drive with whom she had never attempted to establish a close relationship. It was a shyness ridiculous in a woman of fifty, but it had to be preserved. Miro would never have suspected its cause, but Feli might. And that would be an unbearable humiliation.
The little militarized fool was enjoying this — taking messages, keeping up the morale of the President’s secretaries and staff, in continual touch with the Command Post of the Guard, using her influence at the Citadel to see that reports came direct to the Palace as well as to the Ministry of Defense. The wrong woman for Miro. She was too easily overwhelmed by her love of him. It was quite certain that before he chose his side she had approved of Avellana’s program. If she had persuaded him to keep out . . . Well, call it jealousy, but the beauty and devotion of some savage, slim-bellied greyhound were not enough.
She wondered if any of these men who went on fighting from habit or from loyalty or — like the civil governor who had just gallantly cleared a route to the north and escaped by it — from sheer fright had any idea of what pattern there might be in the chaos. Were Feli and her tame Americans right and a Lenin was at work somewhere in the flying darkness and dust where the street lamps had been shot out? It wouldn’t be Pablo Morote. He controlled nothing any longer. He and his port workers had destroyed the four Sacarens with petrol bombs and were now battling for their lives around Police Headquarters.
Nor had the students any serious plan. They had begun well, delightfully conscious that this was a rising which their education fitted them to lead. They had distributed arms to Morote’s militant groups, passing right round the town in commandeered cars and buses to avoid the police cordons. Then they had driven out to the Citadel, expecting it to surrender to enthusiasm. They had tried to rush the gate, for there was nothing visible to keep them out but a white bar raised and lowered by a chain. What did they think the low cupolas set back a hundred meters from the gate were for? And was it likely that the handful of defenders, the storekeepers and the convalescents of Cruzada, were going to change their allegiance now that they had no certainty left but Miro?
Leaving their dead, the students scattered back into the town, firing at nothing. They sacked Miro’s flat and set off incendiary bombs in the block, which wouldn’t burn. No doubt they held this against the enlightened building laws of Gregorio’s administration, for they had passed on to empty ministries, where the police were weak, and were busy hurling furniture out of the windows.
The real danger now was the scum of the Barracas, unled and uncontrollable, who were out in the Alameda looting, killing and dying. The police had them on the run — or claimed they had — when the pressure of factory workers from the outer suburbs squeezed police and crowd together till every group was fighting savagely for a side street up which to retreat.
That was the last news from the now useless telephones, which were either silent, or answered by hysterical idiots whose reports were optimistic nonsense, or left dangling by corporals in an unseen world of clicks and oaths and falling brickwork while the corporals searched for nonexistent authority.
“It is all close enough now to see for ourselves, Feli,” she said. “If they set fire to the Palace, join the domestic staff and try to get out on to the seafront.”
“The Palace? They couldn’t!” Feli exclaimed. “Even when my grandfather fought down the corridor to get at Orduñez . . .”
“This is not a revolution like any other, Feli. One must admit that the two great powers have helped us to be up-to-date.”
From the tall windows of the reception room above the terrace they watched the Glorieta fill. First came running men, turning to fire behind them; then a trickle of small groups; then, as they realized that there was no solid barrier of police, hundreds in a rush which spread out, eddied, and packed the open space from end to end with the liquid of faces.
A short, wavering no-man’s-land remained empty between the surge and the machine guns of the Presidential Guard. It was unnatural as the wall of the Red Sea in an illustrated Bible. Across it, the crowd yelled to the troops to declare for Avellana. From hands safely hidden behind the front rank stones were thrown at the windows, and once a petrol bomb lobbed over the heads of the guard. The troops stood nervously behind the weapons which could sweep the square, and did not look like taking the responsibility of resisting a determined rush; nor did their officers, who were shouting excitedly and giving contradictory orders. The lieutenant colonel and his second in command had retired to their still peaceful Command Post in the courtyard.
At the far left-hand corner of the square the crowd began to cheer. The spontaneous, communal shout carried over the disorganized baying in front of the Palace. Heads turned to look back. A compact party, some of them carrying flaming torches as if in a religious procession, pushed their way through the Glorieta and roughly displaced a section of the front rank. They seemed to be Morote’s men, for all their faces were very dark except where the copper of a high cheekbone glinted in the light of a torch. They were well armed, but none had a coat, though several wore pajama jackets with no shirt beneath. They had the air of an élite of revolution and as such were plainly accepted by the leaderless crowd.
As the phalanx opened up, some facing the machine guns, some the crowd, Feli was astonished to see her father. He was neatly dressed as always, making no concession whatever to the prevailing proletarian mood. These Indians and mestizos were his bodyguard. God only knew how and why he had collected them — probably to hold the gate of the Fonsagrada house in case the Red Cross proved to be insufficient to protect it. And he had come prepared for his own type of action, with a stout door from some looted house. They hoisted him on to it, many shoulders bearing it as steady as the dais of the Chamber or the long-forgotten litter of the Cacique.
Juan held up both hands for silence. He didn’t get it at first. There were cries of “Down with the Ateneo!” It wasn’t his influence which saved him or the casual affection in which he was held, but the fact that in this setting he was comic. There was a halfhearted attempt to hustle his bodyguard. She saw Pancho thrust his torch straight into the stomach of a man who was pushing him too close. The flaming shirt and the screams silenced equally those who saw the atrocity and those who thought it was an accident.
“Gentlemen, let me assure you that if any assault on the Palace is made I shall have no hesitation in ordering its gallant defenders to fire.”
He hadn’t the slightest right to order anybody to do anything. Yet both Concha and Feli, staring at each other in amazement, at once accepted this careless assumption of authority as something of which he had always been capable. It was as much in his character as the oratory by which he could sway a Chamber he despised.
The guard was going to obey. They could see that. The troops had an order they could understand — not for Vidal, not for Avellana, but corresponding exactly to the spirit and scene of their daily ceremonies. Bearing tautened and was more confident. A machine-gun crew deliberately exaggerated their stance to show that the blast of fire, if it came, would be directed to one side of Juan’s small party.
A voice from the crowd shouted:
“And if we kill you first, you old fornicator?”
Juan raised his voice to carry to the center of the square, though the tone was still conversational.
“Paisanos and my friend who has just spoken: you will realize when you come to my age that death is a matter to which one is largely indifferent. Another ten years? Another twenty? Now? When time goes so fast it is absurd to set one’s heart, like a criminal in North America, upon continual reprieves.”
“Live, Fonsagrada! We need a Fonsagrada!”
“Thank you. I will do my best. You are, I believe, in favor of my friend, Gil Avellana?”
The Glorieta crashed with the waves of “Viva Avellana!” and at last Juan held up his hands again for silence.
“Brothers, I take note of your sentiments. And now look around you—” the upper surface of the crowd turned dark as sides of heads instead of faces were presented to the Palace windows. “Do you not see you have no need to fight? San Vicente is yours. Preserve it! Do you agree?”
When the cheering had again died down:
“Gentlemen, have the goodness to allow me five minutes while you light your cigarettes and compare your deeds of courage and devotion. I shall return shortly.”
Juan crossed the no-man’s-land, raised his Panama to the captain left in uncertain command at the front of the Palace, received his permission to pass and mounted the steps.
Concha — with Feli behind her — rushed down into the central corridor crowded with panic-stricken civil servants from the nearest government buildings which had emptied themselves into the Palace; she took Juan quickly into the empty committee room.
“What do you want, Don Juan?”
“The Presidential Guard. With it, I can restore order.”
“He is going to declare for Avellana, Concha,” Feli exclaimed. “Arrest him!”
“My dear Feli,” said her father genially, “this is really not the time to argue about which of us is going to throw the other into the calaboose. It is absurd and undignified, just as when you used to insist it was not bedtime. Doña Concha, I represent only tradition. Another quarter of an hour and the crowd will realize it. Within five years we shall all be yelling Viva Vidal and shall have you back — at the sacrifice next time, I trust, of nothing but tramcars. But meanwhile, give me the guard and be quick!”
“Miro is not defeated, Don Juan.”
“One Division to hold down this explosion and destroy Valdés as well?”
“I will not tell the Citadel to surrender!”
“God forbid, Doña Concha! I know very well that Fifth Division is as precious to you as to me.”
Was there anything he didn’t suspect? She looked into the smiling courteous eyes, and was at once certain that he saw the danger to Miro exactly as she did. But from pride one couldn’t give in on a mere guess.
“If the guard fires, Don Juan, and if then we use every man from the Citadel to reinforce the police, Avellana will have to wait for San Vicente.”
“Yes. Not very long.”
“You believe Gregorio is beaten?”
“It would be even more obvious if he had not the good sense to be absent, Doña Concha. The only power that remains is divided between Gil Avellana and my son-in-law.”
“He will not exercise it.”
“No, he will not. But the guns of the Citadel at least allow him to bargain.”
“Then use them now,” Feli cried.
“On San Vicente? At random? Really, my dear daughter! . . . What we must be sure of, Doña Concha, is that the Citadel is there for him, intact. If you order the handful of troops out into the town you may regain control for a time. But can they hold seven kilometers of road as well? Can they fight their way back? What about the prisoners of war? With a little courage they could overwhelm the few sentries and take the Citadel.”
“And if I give you the guard?”
“Whether Avellana has won or not, I shall pretend he has. What makes democracy tolerable to persons of our taste, dear Doña Concha, is that one can always fool enough of the people enough of the time. I propose that they shall do a little dancing in the streets to enable them to forget for the moment that they are within easy range of the Citadel and that Fifth Division stands between them and Avellana.”
Doña Concha rose, opened the door and sent for the commander of the Presidential Guard. He must have been discreetly watching the Glorieta, for he appeared almost at once. She was not in the least taken in by the professional military mask which covered to perfection his cowardice, his fear of insult and his determination to do nothing. It was another proof — Juan’s had not been so humiliating — that the game was up.
“In the absence of the Captain General and the Minister of Defense,” Concha said, “I desire you to take the orders of Don Juan de Fonsagrada for the sake of the Palace and the Capital.”
The colonel saluted the Presidenta and, relaxing before a mere civilian, looked inquiringly at Juan.
“Nothing, my dear fellow, a mere nothing. I wish you to have the band on parade with their instruments in two minutes at the latest. Uniforms and drill are of no importance. You and your officers need not declare for Avellana unless you wish to. If you do wish to, I will undertake that the Captain General appreciates that you did it in accordance with the Presidenta’s wish to save the Palace.”
The colonel saluted, hesitated, and retired without a word.
“A manly tear —” said Juan — “he should at least have squeezed it out. And it would have prevented yours, my dear, my dear Doña Concha. Feli, pull yourself together and remember that the troops of Fifth Division will obey your orders while they would tell me very rightly to go to hell. Order the two armored cars in the courtyard to conduct the Presidenta and yourself to the Embassy of her choice. Not the United States. To my astonishment, their windows are still intact and we do not want them broken. The cars must then retire at once to the Citadel. I am sure that in a few days you will be able to join your distinguished husband, Doña Concha. Give him my compliments. I shall look forward to seeing him — eventually — at my table in the Ateneo.”
Juan bowed profoundly and kissed the hand of the Presidenta; then, treating her formally as a respected enemy, that of his daughter. She held it warmly to his lips, and would have smiled when he raised his head if it had not been for the infinite pity in his eyes.
CHAPTER XIX
[March 2–7]
“DON ANDRÉS,” said Miro, “you remind me of my Colonel Chaves.”
“I haven’t met him, but from what I have heard I take that as a compliment.”
“Yes. Yes, you may.”
It was only an hour since Rosalindo had left, savage, depressed, for once in his life arm-in-arm with and clinging to Salvador, not because Salvador agreed with him — or if he did he would never say so — but because the A.D.C. represented a shadow of the Captain General in front of whom curses, protests and even tears were at last permissible.
Rosalindo’s mouth, still disfigured by the scar from his broken flask at Cumana and working with emotion under the straggling, drooping Hun’s mustache, had moved him as the mouth of some agonized peasant woman who could be just as merciless in all that threatened what she loved.
But what was the good of going
on fighting when the base was lost? The Volunteer Air Force was now ready and waiting for orders to strike. It made victory in the field quick and quite certain. But what permanence could victory have when half the Division would be employed in policing San Vicente and the rest of it sternly garrisoning every town between Los Milagros and the llanos? Vidal would never be caught returning to such concealed anarchy. The alternatives were Avellana or the dictatorship of General Kucera.
The year of the four Caesars . . . The vivid recollection of a far-distant class room in Prague, all black from his trousers to the blackboard to the history master’s coat, kept on haunting him. The four Caesars. Vidal. Himself. And when he could face it no longer, when the Division had acquired the coarseness of police, preferring cells and blackmail and the loaded revolver to the rush of wheels in open country, then General Chaves; and at last — inevitable unless Rosalindo caught and shot him — Avellana and order, which, whether legal or not, would appear so after what had preceded it.
“Like you, Colonel Chaves wants me to hold San Vicente and the south.”
“I would never presume to tell you what your duty is, but I think it is just that, Captain General.”
“Chaves cannot bear to be beaten either. Both you and he — if this were a game of football, you’d shoot the referee and compel your opponents to go on playing all night.”
“Well, and who’s the referee?”
“The people, I suppose.”
“What’s wrong with the people is that they don’t know what is good for them.”
“No. Possibly not. But for you democracy means not what they choose. It means what they ought to choose. Let us look at the military position, Don Andrés. On the face of it, no doubt you find us still formidable.”
That was certain, for up to now he had only seen chalkmarks on the map and whatever troops Miro had under his immediate eye. But now he had passed through enough of the Armored Brigade, in Hermosillo, to get an impression of its power, and here at Advanced Headquarters were Chaves’s columns — in all six thousand men of a crack Division concentrated and poised to strike irresistibly in any direction.
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